Saturday, July 23, 2011

Thank you Jane!

N is for Nasturtium

We came to MSU in East Lansing to attend the Symposium on Children and Youth Gardening. As I expected, I got to play and explore in the  4-H Children’s Garden on the MSU campus. Even in the blistering sunshine and later welcome rain, it was a glorious place to be!
chimes
green roof over outdoor classroom area

An unexpected highlight of this year’s AHS Symposium was the time I got to spend with Jane Taylor. She attended our presentation on Thursday morning, and we visited off and on throughout the almost four days. The symposium ended with Jane delivering the final keynote address. I learned so much from her and truly enjoyed her positive spirit, sense of humor, energy, and breadth of knowledge and understanding of children, plants, gardens and their joyful intersection! In 2003 she closed her AHS Symposium speech with: 

In this next century it's an unbeatable combination -- children connecting with the natural world through garden-based activities by interacting with living plants and then connecting to AHS resources via computer technology. The simple early aims are still the same-to create gardens to open children's minds, to touch their hearts and souls, and to let imagination's soar while teaching them the basic principles of gardening and science using the common things and fun experiences in their environment.

Today in her closing speech she took a different approach. She taught us of the great role that MSU (and its teachers) has played down through the years. As the first land grant college (beating Penn State by a few months.... They’re a Big 10 rival now...) in the US, Michigan Agricultural College became the incredible institution that we know today as Michigan State University. William James Beal was one of the group of 6 professors here at its beginnings. Along with all his many teaching responsibilities, he created what is now the oldest continuously operating botanical garden. He had Liberty Hyde Bailey as one of his students, a botanist who is considered along with Anna Botsford Comstock to have founded the Nature Study movement. These are two of my early heroes, but I learned today of how L.H.Bailey also helped create the federal laws that founded the Ag Extension system and our current 4-H clubs! As she closed her speech today, Jane congratulated and thanked the future teachers, scientists and gardeners who will continue this important work. It was a fine and optimistic closing to a great symposium.

Jane Taylor played a major part in this ongoing lineage, herself. She  helped to design and install the first real children’s garden. Yes, the one here in East Lansing. Prior to this garden in 1993, children visiting gardens were requested, cajoled and scolded to be careful and certainly not to play on the sculptures!   (Kind of like how we had to call the Philadelphia Museum of Art the “Please Don’t Touch Museum” for my boys.)
Here though at the 4-H Children’s Garden, kids are invited to explore, to use their bodies and minds together, to climb, jump, and hide as they learn about the world of plants and nature. Many similarly active gardens have been formed since then, often in consultation with Jane. I look forward to traveling and finding as many of them as I can in the years ahead!
Thank you Jane! 


Written by Fern

New wonderful gardening blogger!

Greetings from the AHS Symposium on Children and Gardening!

One of the many wonderful outcomes of attending this conference is that we get to meet so many folks doing terrific things in the garden with kids. Today, for example, I attended a workshop led by Shannon Hardwicke from an elementary school in Sacramento, CA.  Shannon is the science and environmental coordinator for this school and described the incredible array of programs she's introduced into her community.  Every week each class (PreK-6th) divides into two groups, with one group having science in the science lab with their teacher while the other half goes to the garden.  There, they have a lesson and then do "garden chores" with the help of parent volunteers whom Shannon trains.  Shannon's created a Green Team of kids, who oversee the recycling program (they compost and recycle almost everything) and who provide leadership for green concerns in the school.  Just this year, the Team made presentations to the school superintendent about the various ways their school could go greener, with the result that a school slated for closure is now identified as the vanguard school for greening!  In addition, she's created a school garden for play, a butterfly house and a kitchen garden, all using parents and kids as labor!  She's one of those folks who has a real can-do attitude and doesn't give up but keeps on pluggin' away.

Here's an article from the local Scaramneto newspaper about the program:

http://www.valcomnews.com/?p=4515


Our suite-mate for the conference was Debbie Kong, a (young) Master Gardener from Chicago, IL.  Among other things, Debbie blogs with two other home gardeners and shares the most interesting and motivating information!  Please give her blog a read.... she has such interesting and low-cost ways to grow food and is another one of those can-do people.  Debbie's background is design, so her gardens are much tidier than mine and she grows the most interesting range of veggies.  You can get to her blog at http://www.greenroofgrowers.blogspot.com/.  Debbie's a big fan of using 5 gallon plastic buckets to make SIP's- Sub-irrigated Planter- very similar to (and much cheaper than) what we know as an Earth Box.  Debbie's posted a video of how to put these together.  She also introduced me to Winter Sowing, using a milk jug.  But, more on that later, when this horrible heat has passed!

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Sharing Seminar in August!

Gardens, Teachers, Children and Youth







A Sharing Seminar 


August 1 through 4, 8:30 AM to 1:00 PM



Day 1, Germantown Gardens and Farms, Then and Now





Day 2, Summer Camp at SCEE and Teens4Good Urban Farm in Andorra 




Day 3, Horticultural Center in Fairmount Park, Penn State Ag Extension programs and resources with Doris Stahl


Day 4, Fair Hill Burial Ground, garden programs



Come join us to see some wonderful places where gardens, plants, and children connect. Each day will begin in a different location. 

In addition, participants will be encouraged to recommend nearby sites that we might also visit on a given day. Each day we will tour a specific site to gain ideas and learn how gardens are used with students. We will use the location as a springboard for our own conversations, sharings, and curricular planning as the participants see fit.


We hope you will join us in exploring and learning about some of the wonderful resources of our own area, as well as sharing expertise and offering mutual support. We are eager to meet you and learn from you while sharing things that we have learned and tried ourselves. We want this sharing seminar to be available to any and all interested people, so there is no registration fee or costs for joining us. Participants can attend any number of the days as fit their personal schedules. People will bring their own drinks, snacks, or lunches. We can work together to share transportation as desired. Please contact either Penny or Fern and we will provide you with the logistical information for each of the four days. 
or

Ithaca Children's Garden


Over the recent holiday weekend, I had the opportunity to visit the Ithaca Children’s Garden in Ithaca, New York.



 It is a sweet little place at the southwest end of Cayuga Lake. On the property of a city park, this small jewel has some lovely features.






entrance to vegetable garden



It includes standard elements such as a vegetable garden and natural sections such as a meadow and a swale. There is a large earth sculpture called Gaia the Turtle which children can climb on and plant in the sectioned beds. 




Gaia

a scute
her tail


fennel plant

There are several small structures which invite tea parties and other forms of imaginative play. I especially liked the house with the green roof. 

green-roofed cottage
Mission Statement of the Ithaca Children’s Garden
The mission of the Ithaca Children’s Garden is to create a unique and joyful garden environment designed to inspire, empower, and connect children and youth with the importance of plants and the natural world.

 I would happily go back day after day to monitor the milkweed for monarch caterpillars! I was there early in the morning on July 4th so I had the place all to myself. I found myself wishing I could travel back in time and bring my sons as young boys to explore and play with me! 


written by Fern